A continuing trend in the electronics industry, among other industries, is to create more and more compact apparatuses leading to an increase in the power density of such apparatuses. Accordingly, as the power density of such apparatuses increases, there may be a corresponding increase in thermal energy to be dissipated for operability of such apparatuses. The size of such apparatuses, as well as the systems in which they are implemented, may impose additional constraints on the size of heat transfer devices used to transport such heat away. Furthermore, thermal management systems, such as for electronics for example, may be designed with uniformity of temperature distribution of a cooled surface and high heat flux parameters in mind.
The increase in power density of high-heat flux devices can make demands on heat transfer devices more acute. This additional demand on the ability to transport heat is further exacerbated by generally smaller dimensions utilizable for such heat transfer devices. Some examples of high-heat flux devices include microprocessors, graphics processing units, and power handling semiconductors, among other devices.
Some heat transfer devices include passageways or channels by which a medium, such as fluid, is flowed to transport heat away. As a result of an increase in the amount of thermal energy to be transported, complexity associated with such heat transfer devices has increased. This increase in complexity has generally led to an increase in hydrodynamic losses associated with fluid passing through such heat transfer devices. The increase in hydrodynamic losses has generally resulted in an increase in the consumption of energy for operation of the heat transfer devices themselves. Some heat transfer devices may not provide sufficient uniform cooling across a heat dissipation surface, namely insufficient isothermal heat dissipation across a heat dissipation surface, including without limitation at relatively high heat fluxes.
Accordingly, it would be desirable and useful to provide cooling at higher heat fluxes with relatively low hydrodynamic losses and with sufficient uniform temperature distribution over a heat dissipation surface.